ings hastily into the barge, with the
addition of a large loaf. In his hurry he had brought no other tools but
his huge forge-hammer, his chopper and hatchet, and a knotted rope.
Furnished with a grappling-iron and with a ladder of that sort, the
steepest rocks become accessible, and a good sailor will find it
possible to scale the rudest escarpment. In the island of Sark the
visitor may see what the fishermen of the Havre Gosselin can accomplish
with a knotted cord.

His nets and lines and all his fishing apparatus were in the barge. He
had placed them there mechanically and by habit; for he intended, if his
enterprise continued, to sojourn for some time in an archipelago of
rocks and breakers, where fishing nets and tackle are of little use.

At the moment when Gilliatt was skirting the great rock the sea was
retiring; a circumstance favourable to his purpose. The departing tide
laid bare, at the foot of the smaller Douvre, one or two table-rocks,
horizontal, or only slightly inclined, and bearing a fanciful
resemblance to boards supported by crows. These table-rocks, sometimes
narrow, sometimes broad, standing at unequal distances along the side of
the great perpendicular column, were continued in the form of a thin
cornice up to a spot just beneath the Durande, the hull of which stood
swelling out between the two rocks. The wreck was held fast there as in
a vice.

This series of platforms was convenient for approaching and surveying
the position. It was convenient also for disembarking the contents of
the barge provisionally; but it was necessary to hasten, for it was only
above water for a few hours. With the rising tide the table-rocks would
be again beneath the foam.

It was before these table-rocks, some level, some slanting, that
Gilliatt pushed in and brought the barge to a stand. A thick mass of wet
and slippery sea-wrack covered them, rendered more slippery here and
there by their inclined surfaces.

Gilliatt pulled off his shoes and sprang bare-footed on to the slimy
weeds, and made fast the barge to a point of rock.

Then he advanced as far as he could along the granite cornice, reached
the rock immediately beneath the wreck, looked up, and examined it.

The Durande had been caught suspended, and, as it were, fitted in
between the two rocks, at about twenty feet above the water. It must
have been a heavy sea which had cast her there.

Such effects from furious seas have nothing surprising for thos